


bones in the dirt

by heartofstanding



Series: Something Beneath The Floorboards [3]
Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Angst, Annie is a vampire, Gen, George is still a werewolf, Ghosts, Mentions of War, Mitchell is the ghost of a WWI soldier, dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-29 00:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17797973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: He opens his eyes and knows this is the place he died.('Something Beneath The Floorboards'-verse).





	bones in the dirt

There's something about being a ghost. Something quiet and small and cold and undeniably dead. Something that sets all of him on a course of _desperately fleeing_ something he can't out-run or out-manoeuvre or out-luck. But still, on the whole, alive. And isn't it funny, the line between dead and alive, how it becomes blurred.

 _Oh_ , Mitchell thinks, one day. Laughing at George's attempts to explain why a date is personal growth, really, _don't they know how long it's been_ and his faux-outrage until they're on the floor, laughing, and it feels like a cliché, really. Like something you read on a book or see on the telly. _I am on the floor, laughing_ , with friends and they love him, but they won't say it out loud, instead shouting it out in two thousand different ways until it's all he knows.

 _Oh_ , Mitchell thinks, _I've never been more alive_ but he's dead, really, dead, and there's no denying it. And it's not like when he was alive, he wasn't really alive, because he was, it's just things were smaller, harder and you didn't love out loud.

+

He finds out what killed him one terrible day. There's anger and fear and a fit of screaming-in-a-downpour (another cliché, but maybe that's what's life is all about?) and the sense of grief that he's still there, there's no door with brilliant white light to take him. They coddle him, his friends, when they find out. Anne hugs him hard each time he walks into a room and looks like she's three seconds away from making him tea, even though he can't drink it. George sits next to him and doesn't speak, trying to make the weight of his warmth a comfort that words never are.

So he's lying in the attic to get away from them. Not because he finds their attentions a nuisance or unpleasant. But being so kind must be wearing, must make them wish he would just get better, that the part of him that's frozen-over, gone numb and unmoving and unresisting, would thaw out and he'd go back to the way he was before.

He closes his eyes and the world drops away.

He opens his eyes and the world has changed.

Mist wreathes the woods, the trees taller, larger than he remembers, the air fresher, sweet-smelling, the sky clear and blue, and the ground is soft beneath his feet. Younger trees have grown, a sapling pushes up between his feet. He steps back, breath coming short and hard and the trees shiver, their branches snapping in the wind. This is a place he knows.

He closes his eyes, focuses on the attic, on the house, on Annie and on George, and he opens them and he's still here. He hasn't left this place. He drives his teeth through his lip and turns on his heel, runs.

The undergrowth is no barrier for him as it once was. It doesn't catch on his clothes, tear his skin or threaten to trip him. If he can't _get out_ , go home, he can still get away. He can't—

He knows this place. This is where he died.

Beneath the trees, he sees the flickers, darkness curving into light, the faces of bodies of people. His lot. Faces covered with mud and blood and shadowed beneath their helmets, the uniform he himself wears, and he has to stop, clutching at his chest. _His lot._ Ghosts of soldiers just like him, but barely-there, lost amongst the shadowy roots of the trees.

'No,' he says, moves toward one, this one small smear of light amongst the dark, but it disappears, flickering in and out like a lifting fog. Another one and it vanishes just the same. He doesn't try again.

Why are they so weak? He pulls back, studying the dirt at his feet, then lifts his head to study the branches rising to an unreachable sky, the blue crystalline in its perfection. They endured the rest of the war in the used battlefields, then the long silent years, and they have made no friends with those who breathe.

Slowly, he forces his breath to slow and even, to put an end to his own panic and let himself settle more firmly on this ground. It is 2009, he is somewhere in Europe. The borders between France and Belgium have become muddled in his mind. France is Belgium and Belgium is France, but Messines is always Messines and the Somme is always the Somme.

It was cold, he remembers it was cold, and it's cold now. It's funny how cold being dead is. No one ever tells you that. And the eyeless dead, they still stand grieving in the fields of war and he doesn't understand why he's here, how he came here. Maybe this is what happens when you find it out how you died. You come back to the place it happened and stay until there's nothing left but the dreams of murder and glorious war.

They, the little ghosts, half-gone, half-forgotten, they crowd around him, pressing paper-thin hands to him. It's like they're cold and he's full of light and fire and maybe he's stronger, but he's not, he's not. He's bloodstained and weary and he wants to go home, he wants to throw himself in his friends' arms and lie with them beneath the covers until the world goes away, until the memories fade and until the war ends.

But the little ghosts don't understand, pulling at his hair and his clothes, desperate for something that he can't give. He's dead and he's cold and he's trying to run away from something larger than himself. All around him, the trees grow up towards a sky that's clear and perfect and it wasn't when he was here before.

Some of these ghosts are men he once knew. Some of these ghosts are men he once killed. Some of these ghosts are the men he fought beside, giving everything for them as he clung to his own life. Some of these ghosts are men like Hegarty, too young and shit-scared and he wants to help them, but he can't. _Don't you understand_ , he wants to say, w _e're all dead. Some of us had to wait longer, but the war's over. We're all bones in the dirt now._  
  
He needs to go, needs to find someone's phone, call George or Annie and beg them to find him. He thinks he's near Messines, but the wind is cold and he is alone, dead soldiers rushing at him, taking everything he can give them and he wants to go home, wants it so very badly.

He breaks free, pushing at them until they part, a sea of ghosts, and he runs again, but he doesn't know where to go. His feet lead him back to that small clearing, that broken ring of trees and the sapling at his feet, pushing its way out of the soft dirt.

He falls to his knees, buries his hands in the dirt. Pulls handfuls of earth away, piling it up beside him. Relentless, he digs through the damp ground until his fingers find something cold, hard and, beneath the black soil and rotting wool and khaki, the white of bone. His fingers shake as he reaches down, traces the fragile lines of the skull, the orbit of an eye and the lines of teeth.

He presses his tongue to his front teeth, feels the small dip where they angle together as his finger traces that same dip in the skull's teeth. His skull.

His.

Tears are streaming down his cheeks and he doesn't know why he cares. He's known this is where his body has lain, amongst the mud and remnants of a war long over for so many years. He's dead, he's dead, his bones rest in this ancient soil, and this isn't going to change or get any better.

Absurdly, he notices the sapling growing between the gaps in his ribs. He's dead, but the world has moved on and nature has tried to heal the hurts of war, taking the dead and forcing life through the spaces they've left behind.

+

When he gets home, he's tired and his hands are stained with dirt and blood, the kind that can't been seen. He can't help the dead soldiers, and the knowledge of burns in the spaces where his ribs once were, the space where his heart lived when he lived. He stares at the door, painted cream between the grey stone and he wants so much that he can barely move.

Still, he manages to push it open and takes the few steps in.

Annie's finishing the washing-up and George is doing the crossword in front of the TV. He stands in the hallway and breathes it in, the scent of home, and knows gratitude so deep it makes his knees go weak and takes his breath. He treks slowly into the kitchen, where Annie is putting away the last lot of plates.

'Ah!' Annie says, 'There you are. George wanted to talk to you about the gardens, about what we're going to plant.' She squints at him. 'You okay?'

He nods. 'Yeah. Just.' He shrugs. 'Been far away.'

'Well,' she says, 'Don't get too far away. We'd miss you, you know.'

 _Would you_ , he wonders. But he knows better than the doubt in his head. He gives her a small smile, reaches for her just as she pulls him into a hug. She's warm and she hugs hard, pulling him in tight enough to crack ribs that aren't there.

'Come on,' he says, quietly, and leads her into the living room. George flicks his eyes up to meet them, hugging a cushion to his chest.

'Are you all right?' He says, eyes large and earnest as they meet Mitchell's.

'I've already asked him that,' Annie answers promptly, but smiles to take the bite out of it. 'Says he's okay.'

'"Okay" has variable meanings among the Irish,' George says. He frowns, taking off his glasses to rub a hand over his face. 'Or so I've found.'

'Jesus,' Mitchell says, 'I am right here, you know?'

He throws himself down next to George, pulls Annie down beside him. He presses close to their warmth, wonders if they're going to end up taking shelter beneath the covers of Annie's bed again tonight. He hooks a chin over George's shoulder, reads the crossword clues.

'Six-across is Messines.'

'Thanks,' George scribbles it down, 'I was going to ask if you knew.'

' _George_ ,' Annie hisses and George looks up, eyes wide and innocent in their shock.

'It's fine,' Mitchell says, to stop the argument before it can start, though it does hurt. That place reduced to a crossword clue. But the world has moved on, even if he hasn't. ' _I'm_ fine, in case you haven't noticed.'

'Good,' George says. He drops the pen and paper onto the table. 'Come on. I'm buggered. _You_ look buggered, Mitchell – and I don't even know how that's possible. And Annie, you said you wanted an early night.'

+

They curl up beneath the covers on Annie's bed, pressing tight together. Annie complains about his cold hands and George squirms for the best part of a hour before settling down. Annie pulls the blankets up over their heads and Mitchell closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out. He's home and he's safe and he's not alone and there's a small tendril of happiness wrapping itself around the space where his heart would be. Even if he's dead, there's something beautiful and quiet to be found still.

He takes a breath.

He's not an idiot, his head's not filled with simple-minded mush whatever those old women used to say in-town. He knows sadness has no ending, that he might go far-away again, where he can't be reached. George won't – can't – live forever and one day Annie will realise she has the whole world lying at her feet. This house might be a ruin one day. But now.

Right now.

They hold each other tight and right at this moment, he knows no one can break them, force them apart or steal their joy. He knows there's some beauty in death to match the ugliness of the war, and he feels something, maybe not life but maybe light and love, pouring through him like a blessing. He smiles into the soft curve of a shoulder. A blessing. 


End file.
